Chapter 26 – America in a World at War
KEY CONCEPTS – Period 7 (1890 - 1945)
An increasingly pluralistic United States faced profound domestic and global challenges, debated the proper degree of
government activism, and sought to define its international role.
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Key Concept 7.1: Governmental, political, and social organizations struggled to address the effects of large-scale
industrialization, economic uncertainty, and related social changes such as urbanization and mass migration.
Key Concept 7.2: A revolution in communications and transportation technology helped to create a new mass
culture and spread “modern” values and ideas, even as cultural conflicts between groups increased under the
pressure of migration, world wars, and economic distress.
Key Concept 7.3: Global conflicts over resources, territories, and ideologies renewed debates over the nation’s
values and its role in the world, while simultaneously propelling the United States into a dominant international
military, political, cultural, and economic position.
LOOKING AHEAD
1. What are some of the views that Americans expressed as the world crises of the 1930s expanded?
2. How did the economic crisis of the worldwide Great Depression help create new political orders in many
nations?
3. What was the sequence of events between 1939 and 1941 that brought the United States into military
involvement in World War II?
War on Two Fronts
Containing the Japanese
 After Pearl Harbor US forces surrendered in the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island; to turn tide US lead 2
offensives- Gen Douglas MacArthur’s attacks from the south, and Admiral Chester Nimitz attacked from HI to
the west
 May 1942 Battle of Coral Sea weakened Jap navy; more important Battle of Midway Island June 1942 regained
US central Pacific control
 Mid-1943 after fighting in Solomon Islands (Guadalcanal) US turned tide
Holding Off the Germans
 US military plans in Europe influenced by Soviet Union and GB; FDR decided to delay invasion into France in
favor of October 1942 counter-offensive in N. Africa against Nazi Gen Erwin Rommel; by May 1943 Gen George
Patton and British Gen Montgomery had driven Germans from Africa
 Soviet Red Army held off immense German 1942-1943 winter offensive at Stalingrad, Hitler’s forces exhausted
and forced to abandon eastern advance
 July 1943 US agreed to British plan to invade Sicily, Mussolini govt collapsed but German reinforcements
prevented capture of Rome until June 1944; slow, costly Italy campaign delayed French channel invasion Soviets
had called for
America and the Holocaust
 By 1942 news of Holocaust (Nazi campaign to exterminate European Jews) prompting public cries to end killing,
but US govt resisted calls for military aid + officials at the State Dept deliberately refused to let Jews enter US
The American People In Wartime
Prosperity
 WWII ended Great Depression problems of unemployment, deflation, production b/c of wartime economic
expansion + massive govt spending (federal budget grew from 1939 $9 billion to 1945 $100 billion)
The War and the West
 West shared disproportionally in massive govt capital investments;
 Businessman Henry Kaiser steered federal funds to make Pacific Coast major industrial center for shipbuilding,
aircraft; launching stage for Japanese war
Chapter 26 – America in a World at War
Labor and the War
 Labor shortage caused by military recruitment; unemployed from Depression worked, but also women + other
previously unused groups entered workforce
 Union membership increased; new govt limits on wage increases +“no-strike” promise, in return govt allowed all
new workers to automatically join unions
 Govt+ public sought to reduce inflation + guarantee production w/o disruption
Stabilizing Boom
 1942 Congress passed Anti-Inflation Act which allowed Pres to freeze prices and wages, set rations; enforced by
the Office of Price Administration
 Govt spent 2X more $ btwn 1941-1945 than it had during whole existence; raised $ thru bond sales, Revenue Act
of 1942 created new high tax brackets
Mobilizing Production
 1942 War Production Board created to organize mobilization effort but was largely unable to direct military
purchases + include small businesses; program later replaced by White House Office of War Mobilization
 Nevertheless, US economy met all war needs; new factories were built, entire rubber industry created. By 1944
output 2X that of all Axis nations combined
Wartime Science and Technology
 Govt stimulated new military technologies by funneling massive funds to National Defense Research Committee
 Originally Germany (w/ sophisticated tanks + submarines) and Japan (w/ strong naval-air power) technologically
ahead of Allies; US, however, had experience w/ mass production in auto industry and was able to convert many
of these plants to produce armaments
 Allied advances in radar + sonar beyond Axis capabilities helped limit effectiveness of U-Boats in Atlantic; Allies
developed more effective anti-aircraft tech and produced large amount of powerful 4-engine aircraft (British
Lancaster + US B17) able to attack military forces + industrial centers
 Greatest Allied advantage found in intelligence gathering—British Ultra project able to break German “Enigma”
code and intercept info on enemy movements; American Magic operation broke Japanese “Purple” code
African-Americans and the War
 Blacks wanted to use war as means of improving own conditions. A Philip Roth (head of Brotherhood of Sleeping
Car porters) wanted all companies w/ war contracts to integrate work force
 Fearing black workers strike, FDR created Fair Employment Practices Commission to investigate labor
discrimination. Later, Congress of Racial equality combated discrimination in society at large using popular
resistance
 War saw migration of blacks from rural South to industrial cities of North in greater numbers than those found
of first Great Migration during WWI
Native Americans and the War
 Some Native Americans served in military (some as famous “Code Talkers”), many others left reservations
seeking work in war industries
Mexican-American War Workers
 War labor shortages lead to large Mex immigration of braceros (contract laborers); ethnic tensions from growing
immigrant neighborhoods w/ existing white communities led to “Zoot-Suit Riots” in Los Angeles in 1943
Women and Children of War
 Large number of women entered roles they were previously excluded from
 Many women worked in factories to replace men who had entered military, but some inequality existed in what
jobs they could hold in factories
 Most women took service-sector jobs in growing govt bureaucracies; limited others worked in “male” heavyindustry (famous Rosie the Riveter image)
 Over 1/3 of teenagers took jobs during war; crime rate also rose during war
Wartime Life and Culture
 Increased prosperity from war led to marked rise in theater and movie attendance, magazine and news
circulation, hotel, casino, dance hall visits
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Chapter 26 – America in a World at War
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War effort largely seen as means of protecting material comfort + consumer choice of “home”; visions of home
and future women romanticized by troops
The Internment of Japanese Americans
 WWII did not largely see restrictions of civil liberties + growth of hatred toward fringe groups as during WWI;
little ethnic tension in part due to propaganda attacking enemy’s political system but not people
 Glaring exception in treatment of Japanese Americans who were painted as scheming + cruel (re-enforced by
Pearl Harbor); white Eur groups largely accepted by now, but assimilated Japs faced prejudice + viewed as
“foreign”
 Conspiracy theories of Jap-Americans aiding in Pearl Harbor attacks led govt + military to see them as a threat;
1942 Roosevelt created War Relocation Authority to move Japanese citizens to “relocation camps” for
monitoring
 Starting 1943 condition began to improve as some Japs allowed to got o college or take jobs on East Coast;
although 1944 Supreme Court case Korematsu v U.S. ruled relocation constitutional, by that time most of
internees had been allowed to leave camps
Chinese Americans and the War
 US war alliance w/ China helped Chinese Americans advance legal + social position—1943 Congress repealed
Chinese Exclusion acts
 Many Chinese took jobs in industry or were drafted into the military
The Retreat from Reform
 FDR wanted to shift priority from reform to war effort and victory
 With massive unemployment no longer an issue + Republican gains, Congress dismantled relief programs and
other New Deal programs
 In 1944 Pres election Repubs nominated Thomas Dewey; Dems re-nominated Roosevelt but w/ new, less liberal
VP candidate Harry Truman
 Despite deteriorating health Roosevelt was popularly elected; Dems maintained control of both Houses of
Congress
The Defeat of the Axis
The Liberation of France
 By 1944 devastating Allied strategic bombing against German industry at Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin reduced
production + complicated transport; German Luftwaffe forced to retreat to bases w/in Germany itself,
weakened it
 After 2 year buildup in England Supreme Allied Commander Gen Dwight Eisenhower ordered invasion across
English Channel into Normandy, France on “D-Day” (June 6, 1944); Allies drove Germans from the coast, by
September forced them to retreat from France, Belgium
 In December Germany counter-attacked during Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest, but soon repelled;
with Soviet advances on Eastern front, Allies began moving into Germany across Rhine
 April 30 Hitler commits suicide; May 8, 1945 full surrender + “V-E” Day
The Pacific Offensive
 Thru 1944 American navy crippling Japanese shipping and economy in Pacific; on mainland Asia Japan attacking
thru Chinese interior trying to cutoff Gen Stilwell’s Burma Road for supplies
 June 1944 Americans captured Mariana Islands, in September Battle of Leyte Gulf Japanese navy decimated by
US sinking of its aircraft carriers; in next few months Japanese fought desperate battles of resistance in Feb at
Iwo Jima, in June at Okinawa (used Kamikaze suicide bombers throughout)
 Many feared bloody island battles would ensue w/ invasion of Japanese mainland, but by 1945 Japanese
weakened by firebombing in Tokyo, shelling of industrial centers; moderates in govt trying to sue peace against
will of military leaders wanting to continue fight
The Manhattan Project
 After news in 1939 that Nazis pursuing atomic bomb, US and +GB began race to develop one before them; work
based on discovery of uranium radioactivity by Enrico Fermi 1930s, Einstein’s theory of relativity
Chapter 26 – America in a World at War
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Army took over control of research and poured billions of $ into Manhattan Project which gathered scientists to
create nuclear chain reactions w/ a bomb
 On July 16 1945 the plutonium bomb Trinity, created by scientist Robert Oppenheimer at the Los Alamos
Laboratory, successfully tested
Atomic Warfare
 Pres Truman issues ultimatum to Japanese for “unconditional surrender” by Aug 3rd or face annihilation; after
Jap moderates unable to convince military leaders to accept Truman ordered use of atomic weapon
 Some argue atomic weapon unnecessary b/c in time Japs would have sued for peace; others argue only atomic
bomb could convince radical military leaders that surrender necessary. Truman saw weapon as military device
that could end war quickly, but some say he used it to intimidate Stalin and Soviets
 August 6, 1945 bomber Enola Gay dropped atomic weapon on Japanese city Hiroshima, killing 80,000 civilians;
because Jap govt didn’t respond, on August 8 second atomic bomb dropped on city of Nagasaki killing 100,000
 By Aug 14 emperor agreed to surrender; September 2, 1945 Japan signed articles of surrender (“V-J Day”)
marking end of WWII
 14 million combatants had died during war, even more civilians; threat of nuclear war loomed between two
emerging super-powers in US and Soviet Union